Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy pressed Nato allies to accelerate deliveries of Patriot missile interceptors, as Ukraine’s stocks start to run dangerously low, warning that funding alone will not solve growing shortages as Russia intensifies its missile campaign against Ukrainian cities.

Speaking alongside Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte during an unannounced visit to Kyiv on June 3, Zelenskiy said Ukraine “urgently needed greater protection against ballistic missile attacks,” which have become “the main danger” of Russia's strategy after more than four years of war.

“Russia can produce up to 120 ballistic missiles per month: this is the greatest threat we are currently facing,” Zelenskiy said during the press conference.

“Ballistic missiles are Russia's last argument in this war against Ukraine, and we must find a sufficient response to them,” Zelenskiy told reporters. It “would help greatly for our partners to focus particularly on protection against ballistic missiles.”

In the last weeks, Moscow and Kyiv have been trading increasingly destructive missile barrages that have hit civilian targets in escalating tit-for-tat retaliations.

Ukraine has been firing more medium- and long-range missiles at Russia this year than Russia is firing at Ukraine this year, provoking Russia to increase the intensity of its own attacks. After a potential attack on Red Square during this year’s Victory Day parade, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) followed up with a major attack on Moscow.

At the same time, Kyiv targeted the university town of Starobilsk on May 22, a city in the Russian-occupied part of Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine, killing two dozen students, mostly teenaged girls. That attack has caused widespread outrage in Russia and prompted the Kremlin to threaten a retaliatory strike on Kyiv. presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned foreign embassy staff to leave the city ahead of the mooted strike, which has yet to happen.

Zelenskiy’s call for more air defence ammunition came a day after another large-scale Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv killed 12 people, underscoring Ukraine's continued dependence on Western-supplied air-defence systems. But on the same day, Ukraine hit oil storage facilities in St Petersburg just as the Kremlin’s flagship St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) got underway on June 3 in a symbolic attack designed to spoil the event.

 

Kyiv has repeatedly requested additional US-made Patriot batteries and interceptors, widely regarded as the most effective defence against Russian ballistic missiles. After Kyiv was supplied with extensive air defences after the first year of the war, Kyiv became inured to Russian missile and drone attacks on the capital as the air defences proved increasingly effective at shooting down the inbound rockets. More recently, residents have taken to sleeping in the metro stations again as more and more of Russia’s rockets penetrate those defences to hit residential buildings in Ukraine’s capital.

However, there is a dire shortage of the crucial Patriot PAC-3 interceptor missiles, after the US and its Gulf allies burnt through the larger part of their stockpiles in the first weeks of the Iran war. Only capable of making some 600 interceptor missiles a year, there is now a huge years-long backlog of orders to rebuild these stockpiles. Europe has already donated what it had spare to Ukraine and is also scrapping the bottom of the barrel.

In general, Europe is struggling to offset the shortfall of weapons supplies to Ukraine under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) programme since the US stopped its military support for Ukraine after US President Donald Trump took office. Last year the overall volume of weapons supplied to Ukraine fell for the first time since the war began over four years ago.

Two thirds of the recently approved €90bn EU loan is earmarked for defence spending and Nato allies have pledged an additional $35bn in February to strengthen Kyiv's air-defence capabilities. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has previously suggested that support could include 35 Patriot PAC-3 interceptors.

“The quantity of deliveries has decreased rapidly,” Zelenskiy said at the press conference with Rutte, attributing the slowdown partly to the conflict involving Iran and the resulting pressure on global stocks of Patriot missiles and related systems.

Bankova is now casting round for alternative supplies. Zelenskiy revealed that Kyiv had reached agreements with “several countries” to take over their place in the queue for Patriot missile deliveries from the US.

“But you can only take that place in the queue if you have paid for the contract — and we have to pay,” he said.

Zelenskiy said six countries had agreed to make new contributions through the PURL programme but warned that “the pace of deliveries through PURL and the volume of those deliveries are not sufficient”.

Rutte acknowledged the challenges but insisted support remained on track. “The US is doing what it can in terms of delivering PAC-3 and PAC-2 Patriot missiles to Ukraine,” he said.

Nato admits that fund raising to pay for Ukraine’s weapons is running behind schedule. Rutte said Ukraine's partners had pledged nearly $6bn through PURL. Given that allies had already committed approximately $5bn under the scheme last year, that implies only about $1bn in additional funding has been secured during the first five months of 2026, well short of the $12bn target Rutte had previously set for the year, Politico reports.

But Rutte said that the headline figures understate actual commitments. One person familiar with the discussions said allies had agreed additional contributions worth “millions” of dollars that had yet to receive final political approval and therefore could not be announced publicly, Politico reports.

“The Secretary General was clear that support to Ukraine through PURL will continue, so we should expect more pledges in the near future,” a Nato official said.

The debate comes ahead of a Nato leaders' summit in July to which Zelenskiy has been invited. Allies are seeking to present a credible long-term support framework for Ukraine, but what form that will take remains unclear. Member states have already rejected Rutte’s proposal to lock in permanent funding worth 0.25% of member states’ GDP annually for Ukraine, and are instead discussing a German-backed alternative that would increase transparency around military assistance while establishing a collective funding target but one that doesn’t involve permanent commitments.

Zelenskiy sounds increasingly frustrated and emphasised that Ukraine's ability to defend its cities depends increasingly on the timely delivery of missiles already promised rather than mere promises of new pledges.